Hooked on fish

NEWPORT — For a while, Laura Blackwell thought someone should collect recipes from those who know seafood best — local fishermen.

After poking around and Googling, Blackwell found no such cookbook. So she put together “The Fisherman’s Table.”

“I did find things about actual tables, but not the table of food from local waters,” she said.

Blackwell grew up near the water in Monroe, Conn., and has lived in Newport full time for two-plus years. Before that she worked seasonally as a hospitality deckhand on yachts, traveling in and out of Newport. Until recently she worked as marketing director for Newport Storm Brewery.

Blackwell studied writing at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and now works as a freelance marketer. As a kid, she fished with her dad for recreation, but decided to up the ante last year.

She spent $40 for a limited lobstering license. “I bought four pots on Craigslist and put them in the water,” Blackwell said. “I didn’t catch a thing.”

She approached some local fishermen for advice, and they took her out to sea and showed her tips on the right bait. (Skate works best).

“I decided to kind of mine their expertise on the best recipes,” Blackwell said. “A lot of times they didn’t have really specific recipes. But I’d experiment and try things out on them. And they’d tell me how to tweak things, that maybe I needed to use more chourico or something along those lines.”

The fishing community can be tough for outsiders to crack. In fact, Blackwell now has a fisherman boyfriend who’s too shy to be named in the newspaper.

“I think the fact that I was willing to go out on the boats and learn helped my credibility,” she said. “After a while they were willing to show me the ropes.”

The local waterways are a great resource for delicious food, including lobster, sea bass, tautog, crab and squid, Blackwell said. She buys fresh seafood at the docks, farmers markets and the Newport Lobster Shack at the Louis Jagschitz State Fishing Pier.

“I’m done with store-bought,” she said. “We have the freshest stuff right here in our waters.”

Her recipes underwent rigorous testing, Blackwell said. She’s cooked everything in the book and shared the dishes with friends and family. She also provided friends and family members with recipes so they could produce dishes for taste-testing.

“We’re the Ocean State, after all,” Blackwell said. “Why not promote our own local products? A lot of the local fishermen end up sending what they catch far away. But it’s great if local people take advantage of the fresh food available locally.”

So far, the book — with dishes such as Sweet Potato Fish Cakes and Lobster Stuffed Lobster — has sold 250 of its initial 750 copies.

“I’ve gotten a lot of positive reaction,” Blackwell said. “I think it helps because it’s from the experts, being the local fishermen.”

She loved hanging out in the kitchen as a kid. “The Fisherman’s Table” merges her love of seafood and her desire to boost the local economy.

She has no immediate plans for a sequel, but there is no lack of new material. “A lot of people have come out of the woodwork with their own ideas,” she said. “It’s exciting in ways I didn’t expect.”